The jobs bill falls far short

Good news, folks! After much ado, lofty debate and no small amount of political arm-twisting, the august U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill that would give temporary payroll tax breaks to companies that hire people who are now jobless.

The not-so-good news? Almost no one, not even the people who voted for the bill, thinks it will do much good.

The House once had grander plans and produced a “jobs bill” worthy of the name, but a funny thing happened when it got to the other end of the Capitol building: The filibuster-happy Senate, where nothing more important than a recess call can be passed by less than 60 votes, flat-out rejected the idea of passing a meaningful plan to put Americans back to work.

The senators cut the meat out of the bill, threw it away and sent the tattered pelt back to the House.

Feeling the heat to do something, anything, the House responded by accepting the Senate’s arrogant offer.

Even then the congressmen couldn’t agree: 207 of them voted for the pitiful measure, 201 (including 35 Democrats, mostly members of the Black Caucus) didn’t want to do even this much.

You would never guess, from the political power-playing in Washington, that the nation’s economy is in the worst shape since the Great Depression. Staten Island Rep. Michael McMahon gamely tried to put a positive spin on the bill.

“My primary focus has been and remains putting Staten Islanders back to work and getting our small businesses on solid footing,” he said. “The HIRE Act provides a payroll tax holiday for businesses so they can hire more workers and also an income tax credit of $1000 so they can then retain these employees.”

The paltry bill also extends the Highway Trust Fund by subsidizing bond sales, a move that will provide some money for infrastructure projects that would have probably been done anyway.

Those projects are jobs funded, not jobs created.

Is this the best we could do? It is not. Not even close.

Don’t give us the old saw that “politics is the art of the possible.”

A lot more is possible, or would be if it were not for the indifferent and the obstructionists and the political game-players who hope voters will not notice their machinations and will be misled into believing it was the administration that failed.